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It's criminal what a girl's gotta do for a good read.
Sue Turnbull, Media Studies, La Trobe University
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Asked to explain why they like reading crime fiction, women readers often offer contradictory responses. On the one hand they talk about the genre in terms of its 'realism'; and on the other in terms of its escapist pleasures. This paper will investigate how these discourses of realism and escapism articulate with larger issues: issues which involve an aesthetics of the popular, particularly in relation to crime fiction and romance as formulaic fiction, as well as moral and political concerns about the representation of violence.
